Trump's mathematics

Just like us?

Published in The News on January 26, 2026   

Way back in the 1970s, Pakistan had a health minister who claimed in an international conference that he had got prices of medicines reduced by 1000 per cent by introducing generic drugs. He was asked how this was possible, as reducing the price of anything costing Rs 100 by a hundred percent would mean it would be available for free, and a reduction of a thousand percent would mean that the buyer would get Rs 900 as well as the free item. I do not remember what the minister said when this was pointed out to him (if at all it was), but it was forgotten in a few days.

I was reminded of this when I heard US President Trump promise a thousand per cent reduction in drug prices. I could understand a Pakistani minister saying it, as we know the state of education in our country, but how is it that even the US president does not know what a seventh grade student does? Should we then assume that the US is just another third world country?

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

https://www.thenews.pk/print/1395166-just-like-us

US Iran tension and property prices in Karachi

There are credible reports that Pakistanis in Dubai and other countries in the region are moving their wealth to Pakistan to buy property in their homeland. Prices of bungalows, apartments and plots have skyrocketed, particularly in Karachi's DHA. The main reason is that the US may attack Iran any moment, and the resulting war will cause destruction in Arab countries neighboring Iran (if it retaliates, as it has threatened).

It's been evident for a long time that the glamour of Dubai, Qatar and Kuwait is a sham. If there is even a minor disturbance there, like the public coming out on the streets to protest, the resulting panic will see a mass exodus of foreigners from these countries. The attacks on Iran six months ago by the US and Israel led to the shutdown of Dubai's airport. In fact, yesterday some major airlines cancelled their flights to Israel and the region, expecting an attack by the US on Iran. 

Let's hope sanity prevails and Trump can be persuaded to back down. 

Gul Plaza fire

DEATH TRAPS

Published in Dawn on January 23, 2026

Embed from Getty Images

THE recent fire at Gul Plaza proves that most buildings in Karachi remain death traps, and that nothing would be done to ensure that such incidents do not happen in the future. Of course, there are people in the government whose duty it is to ensure that buildings are constructed with adequate safety precautions and have at least two emergency exits. There must be those who are required to visit such buildings periodically and ensure that fire prevention SOPs are being observed.

And we can be sure that, on paper at least, such officials have reported that all places they have inspected are safe, just as there are factory inspectors who never visit factories because they are paid to stay away and generate all-good reports.

That said, can everything be blamed on the government? What about the shop-keepers themselves? It has been many years since I last went to Gul Plaza, and I saw that many shopkeepers had kept their goods in the passages leading to the exits. This would have made it very difficult for their customers to quickly get out of the building in an emergency.

As for fire prevention measures, it is simply out of the question. Purchasing fire extinguishers and recharging them every six months is both time consuming and cumbersome. And, in any case, why waste one’s money on frivolous things like fire prevention measures? Right?

Of course, if relevant inspectors had regularly visited the building and imposed fines on errant shopkeepers, this tragedy could have been avoided. But, then, such officials have only one thing in mind: how to speedily recover the money they have paid to get transferred to Karachi, and how to become millionaires in a couple of years. Absolutely tragic.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

https://www.dawn.com/news/1968588/death-traps

2,400 fires in Karachi in 2025!

The recent fire in Karachi's Gul Plaza should not have surprised anyone. It is reported that the city had 2,400 fires in 2025. Most of these would never have happened in we had honest government officers. The incredible corruption of Sindh Government is well-known. I estimate that more than half of its revenue is siphoned off to foreign bank accounts belonging to the rural areas. 

The Gul Plaza fire would never have happened if the officials warming their chairs had visited the place even once to check if fire safety measures were being followed. The plaza was originally built for a thousand shops, but two hundred shops were added without permission. If the Sindh Building Control people had prevented the additional construction, perhaps those trapped in the plaza could have managed to escape.

If more proof of their corruption is required, just consider that initially about thirty people were reported missing. When the government announced that it would pay ten million rupees to the kin of the deceased, the number of missing persons jumped to 85! One can easily guess what happened. Some people in the rural areas (in collusion with their friends in the government) will claim the ten million, declaring that their relatives died in the blaze. It's another matter that they will never be able to prove that their relatives were in the city, but that won't matter. Half of the ten million will be pocketed by their friends and relatives in the government, and they will be richer by five million. Of course, those unfortunate ones whose near and dear ones were among the victims will get the compensation money after many months, if ever. In fact, even they will have to pay half of it to the corrupt officials.

Karachi's mayor and solar power

Published in Dawn on January 16, 2026

WRONG ESTIMATE: This is with reference to the report ‘Mayor inaugurates Rs900m solar-powered street light project on Sharea Faisal’ (Jan 5), which quoted the Karachi mayor (Murtaza Wahab) as saying that the project would “save Rs25m in electricity bills” every year. I do not know whether to laugh or cry. A simple calculation (900 divided by 25) shows that the payback period for this project is 36 years. Ask anyone who knows the subject, and you will be told that the payback period should be of five years. The city mayor either does not know what he is talking about or someone has minted a lot of money.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

https://www.dawn.com/news/1967290/wrong-estimate

Imran Khan fails to get support from the people of Karachi

Imran Khan's supporters, encouraged by the turmoil in Iran, thought they could persuade the Pakhtuns of Karachi to rise against the government. It was a miserable failure. Only a few people attended, the ground was practically empty, so his henchmen made speeches on the road. 

It's easy to understand why the Pakhtuns refused to fall for his latest gambit. Imran Khan's province (KP) is reeling due to the stoppage of smuggling from Afghanistan, and this is affecting Pakhtuns all over the country. They realized that by paralyzing Karachi, the whole country would be affected and they would be the ones to suffer the most. Besides that, inflation is under control, prices of commodities have decreased due to prevention of smuggling them to Afghanistan, so the people really support the present government. Also the failure of Imran's party to improve conditions in KP (the only province under its control) has made his party very unpopular. Let's hope Imran Khan realizes now that it's better for him to remain quiet and remain in jail for another three years at least.

Artificial intelligence: a future scenario

A future scenario

Published in DAWN, January 5th, 2026

ARTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) is speedily becoming very popular as more and more people use it to save time. However, it is now impossible to say with certainty whether a particular video clip is fake or real. We know that there are many people who go berserk when they see videos of their womenfolk dancing or even photos in which they are seen seated next to men who are not their close relatives. What if someone posts a fake video or obscene photo of a woman (who has rejected his advances) on social media and sends it to her relatives?

Things have got so bad that it is now impossible to even talk to others without getting into an argument. If, for example, I mention a video of a cult leader saying something controversial, the immediate response is, “It’s probably AI-generated”. Neither side is in a position to establish authority of the claim in such cases.

Of course, there is a positive side to it also. In school, we were taught that politics and religious topics should be avoided when talking to friends or strangers. So the only safe thing left is sports, like, say, cricket. I know for sure that I would not be lynched if I say that a particular cricketer should not be selected for the next tour.

Certainly, a more serious problem is likely to surface in a few decades from now, when, fortunately I have no chance of being alive. When robots become increasingly like humans in appearance, how will someone know if the man or woman talking to them is real?

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

https://www.dawn.com/news/1965215/a-future-scenario

A week later on January 12, this was again printed in DAWN (https://www.dawn.com/news/1966445/ais-future).

Jungle rule: Trump's invasion of Venezuela

Embed from Getty Images

For weeks, Donald Trump had been talking of invading Venezuela and arresting its president. Yesterday the unthinkable happened: US forces captured the Venezuelan president and his wife while they were asleep. This is pure jungle rule. Trump is behaving like the neighborhood bully. Last week he said that the US would bomb Iran if demonstrators in that country were killed by the government. Of course, if he does attack Iran again, the Iranians would become more united. But would he threaten the Saudis if they did the same thing?

What I don't understand is how the US could simply walk into Venezuela and arrest its sitting president. Obviously, there must have been agents on the ground who kept the US informed of the Venezuelan president's whereabouts. But why hasn't the same thing been done to Cuba, which is avowedly anti-US? Is it because the Cuban people support their leaders?

It seems that Trump wants to control all the oil left on earth. He doesn't realize how much fossil fuels are responsible for global climate change. 

Dealing with inflated utility bills

Living in a third-world country like Pakistan has its advantages, incredible as it sounds. For instance, you don't have to wait fifteen days before a doctor gives you an appointment. You can buy medicines without a doctor's prescription. You can get cheap smuggled auto parts and even car engines that have been stolen or taken from damaged vehicles. But the downside is that if you get an inflated electric or gas bill it's almost impossible to persuade the company that there is an error in the bill and it should be revised.

Of course this kind of thing was very common before the electric supply company and the telephone departments were privatized. I once got a bill from Karachi Electric (before privatization) for a phenomenal amount, which was revised only after I had paid a bribe equivalent to a quarter of the bill amount. As for telephone bills, almost every month I would be charged for calls made to Ireland or Australia, which I had to pay, otherwise the telephone would be disconnected. In some cases, I did manage to get refunds, as in the case of a "ghost phone" which was not in my use. But usually one had to suffer and wonder why one's father had to choose this country to live in when many had migrated to civilized countries like Uganda or Nigeria (in 1947).

So when I got an inflated gas bill the other day I lost no time in going to their office and got the bill rectified. This was due to the fact that the meter reading on the bill was much higher than in the photo of the meter on the day the reading was taken. It was only due to my education that I was able to do so. An illiterate Pakistani would have been shooed away and told to pay or do without gas for the rest of his life. 

The Taliban will never stop destabilizing Pakistan

Not a day passes by without a terrorist attack in the north of the country. It was Imran Khan who encouraged the Taliban by saying that they had broken the shackles of slavery when the US withdrew its forces from Afghanistan. Later he emboldened them further by allowing forty thousand Afghans to settle in KP. That's the main reason for our failure to rein in the terrorists.

Another reason is that the Afghan Pakhtuns believe that KP and Baluchistan belong to them. They have been aided by India since 1947 to destabilize Pakistan. The problem is, many Pakhtuns in Pakistan also want their province (KP) to be either independent or part of Afghanistan. The Taliban will never give up their claim on the two provinces, especially since they want to impose strict Islamic rule over the whole of Pakistan once they get the two provinces.

The rebels in Baluchistan want their province to be an independent country. Here too India has played a major role. Baluchistan is the most undeveloped province in the country despite its rich mineral wealth. The common people in Baluchistan did not get to share in the revenue the chieftains received for the natural gas they sold to the rest of the country. 

It's indeed a matter of shame that our governments have not been able to pacify the people of the two provinces.